Enslaver Ants play an important role in Weevil society as motivational coaches, masters of indoctrination and efficiency experts, but they're also dangerous if left to their own devices. With their powers of persuasion they routinely motivate Weevil workers to labor faster and longer. However this indoctrination wears off and must be repeated at regular intervals.

Indoctrination of grubs (children) is strictly forbidden because prior to morphing into adults such indoctrination is permanent and irreversible, and repugnant to all Weevils. For this reason, Enslaver Ants are forbidden to be around grubs.

Because of Enslaver Ants, sugar is an illegal substance on Arthropoda. While sugar is a pleasant enough intoxicant for all Weevils, it is a dangerous drug when an Enslaver Ant gets a snootful. They become power mad, and their mental prowess enables them to act on these tendencies with disastrous results. For the good of Weevil society, sugar is taboo on Arthropoda.

When the war started, Odyl's natural tendency to be a total suck-up caused him to get greedy. Unfortunately, no one was paying enough attention, a fatal mistake with an Enslaver Ant!

I like your characters. A real challenge to make the 3D look as nuanced as your hand drawn versions!

One thing I've learned this go-round is to leave all the decaling and texturing til the very end. So I'll be finishing and rigging a blank white model.

man this is gonna be a great production!

Just trying to keep up with you, Spleeny!

Here's a rotation of the finished model. Once again the face rig will be non-standard! Not much mouth movement, no eyelids, but the mouthparts, mandibles and antennae move around somewhat for an extra-creepy effect.

Just for grins, here's an animated GIF I made back when animated GIFs were cool!
http://www.mooneyart.com/bugbots/images/animatedodyl.gif

I put it in an image tag so people could see it easier.

Thanks Robcat, didn't know if Animated GIF's could be posted.

He looks great, Gerry!

Here's a very simple test of Odyl's body rig. I'm having a heck of a time rigging his face what with all his mouthparts, antennae, mandibles, etc. I have a mental picture of how it needs to work but still thinking it through.

He looks good!

Yah he does look good - but HE looks & gives the impression of being a girl to me.

Your drawing looks like a manly bug - and maybe it's the angle of the camera in the clip, but the 3d model's legs appear girl-like, shapely, and are set wide apart, suggesting large hips & pelvis, and a girly small waist. The arms aren't as muscular as in the drawing either.

Or perhaps, boy and girl alien bug creatures are hard to tell apart?

Beef that Bug Boy up ! Unless he is supposed to be a kinder, gentler dude.

Thanks for the comments, and Nancy, you're right about the impression created, but this is just a first test and I was just moving his parts around to make sure they work. He's a skinny, stringy, creepy little sh*t, insinuating and icky in a Uriah Heep kind of way. Maybe there is an off-putting effeminacy in his groveling oiliness.

I'm hoping the displacement decaling I'll be doing will enhance his "manliness". There will be quite a lot of texturing both with materials and decals.

But your observations are right on. I still need to figure out his body language and characteristic gestures, etc. I also noticed that when I move his head forward at this angle, it tends to look bigger than it really is. May be just the camera's proximity but I want to avoid that happening as a rule because it makes him look shrimpy.

Try narrowing the camera's angle and moving it farther back. Wider angles tend to exaggerate sizes and distances, narrower angles compress the depth of field.

My wife says his legs looks like Paris Hilton.

Here's a test of his face rig:

please no clips of him getting out of a limo...I don't think I could handle that.

But that was gonna be my big opening shot!

LOL

I didn't want to post too many incremental shots but I really like the way Odyl's coming out! So here's a rerun of the previous test but with *some* of the decaling done. There's still some displacement and specularity decals to be added though.

You know I've been thinking about your comments Nancy and even though the hips/legs part of the anatomy of these critters has some pecularities, I realized that what didn't work about that Odyl shot is that in terms of the character's personality and how it's communicated through his body language, Odyl probably NEVER faces someone directly. He's all sidelong glances, indirectness and insinuation. So yeah, his hips are wide, but I think in developing this character he's never viewed fully face-on.

i like his pincers and antennas, he's looks cool and sly.

Just don't stand too close to him!

Here's a quick turnaround of Odyl with all decaling and texturing complete. It's a little dark, but, hey, that's just how he rolls!

As long as you keep that lighting whenever he's in the scene, he looks great.

Red is his color! He's an "autumn".

I just posted this video on my "Nightcallers" blog, so if you want to see it AGAIN, click here!

In fairness I did write a bit about my process, but next time I'll try to be more conscientious about posting progressive renders so I can illustrate the various steps instead of just talking about them.

Hey Gerry, where's the shot you did with the wings flapping and how did you do that?

Hi Robert, I detailed the solution here, and the video of it is there as well as on the Nightcallers blog.

I haven't done any additional work on Odyl, but I have a feeling that making the character work will depend on being able to give him poses with strong silhouettes. Without that I'm not sure he'll read. I'll have to look at that.

you have a whole production going?
Good for you!

Gene

All I'm shooting for is to animate the short story/trailer that I've storyboarded at www.nightcallers.net.

I've also been wondering, I've heard that some film festivals frown on or disallow anything that's an obvious trailer for a feature. But my storyboard isn't a trailer, i.e., it's an episode, or a first scene, but not a trailer in the sense of disconnected, cut-together scenes from a longer production.

So I've been wondering if it would be allowed. I need to look into that but if anyone knows more about what technically constitutes a short vs. a trailer where festivals are concerned, I'd be happy to hear about it.

Working on some nice sneaky walk cycles for Odyl. Here's the first one.

here's another one. Arms aren't animated yet on this one.

Not having the arms animated actually kinda works for that sneaky stuff. LoL

Just slight changes would make it VERY believable.

Good work!

Thanks Jody. I'm still working on it, it needs more weight at some spots. btw I still plan on sending you a shot to render! ANY day now....

Here's a first stab at Odyl's twitchy, oily demeanor. It's a little too animated, as it looks like there should be dialog when it's really just him acting menacing. Getting the hand-rubbing just right is a challenge.